The Role of Trust in Building a Great Design Partnership

Have you ever been involved in a client engagement where you felt that you just couldn’t get through? Where mediocre work kept bubbling to the top and the most compelling ideas kept landing on the cutting room floor. Where in spite of you and your team’s best efforts, you just couldn’t seem to get the client to rally around and support your recommendations. We’ll you’re certainly not alone, since time immemorial practitioners in the creative services industry have struggled with spending more time defending their work, than creating it.

A lasting (and successful) business relationship between a design consultancy and a client is built on many things, including: great communication, mutual respect, and shared vision and goals. Of all of the elements that coalesce to form a great partnership however, the most important is trust. Without trust it is impossible for new ideas, different ideas, great ideas, and often risky ideas to ever see the light of day. Without trust, clients will struggle with mustering the political will required to push great ideas forward and designers will find themselves in a position where producing “safe” work that passes the sniff test is preferable to producing great work that is constantly second guessed and molested. But trust doesn’t suddenly appear as soon as the contract is signed – ultimately it must be earned. But before trust can be earned the opportunity must first be granted. This is sometimes referred to as “giving the designers enough rope to hang themselves.”

There are a variety of reasons that trust fails to bloom early-on in a relationship. A client may have been burned by subsequent agency relationships. The designer(s) may fail to deliver results early in the process. Things as simple as not promptly returning phone calls or, more seriously, failing to listen and thoughtfully consider client feedback can all derail the delicate process of forging the type of relationship that is necessary to succeed.
There are cases that, for whatever reason however, trust is just not going to make an appearance. In those situations the best course of action a design firm can take is to wind down the project as professionally and quickly as possible, knock the dust off your shoes, and move on. You may think you can change them. But then you’d be wrong.

After spending over a decade working with some of the most discriminating, demanding, and loyal clients in the world, I’ve developed a bit of a sixth sense when it comes to identifying which clients are prepared to make the type of commitment required to produce great work and, just as importantly, a great partnership.

Gadi Amit, the founder of New Deal Design, recently wrote an interesting post on the Fast Company blog entitled “Know Thy Partner: Three Client Types and How to Work With Them” Below is an excerpt where he provides a quick designer’s guide to client types.

The Gray Team: Some organizations opt for the middle in every way. These companies are filled with good people and, in many cases, brilliant talent. The latest management methods are employed and the latest tools are deployed. Consensus-building is a key factor in the dynamics. But this effort to satisfy so many aspects of the problem and so many departments of the company at the same time can drive the product development into the doldrums of the comfy middle. At all levels, from the top down, team members are committed to solid collaborative engagement, yet vision and optimism are tuned out. No matter how challenging the task is or how critical the product will be for the company’s growth, the results are going to be mediocre. Not bad, not good, just plain…gray.

The Dictatorship: This is a scary place, but if you’re on the right side, brilliant things could happen! In this case a very small number of individuals–possibly only one–are dragging a semi-cooperative organization on a journey to a place only they can envision. That journey is your project, so you better buckle up since you’re in for a wild ride. For many reasons this organizational approach to product development and design is centralized to the extreme, often due to a crisis, a turn-around situation, or maybe that’s just what tradition dictates. One thing to remember: Always keep the leadership happy. If not, you’re out the door the next morning. But after you’ve succeeded in making the executive suite happy, you’ll have to work with the organization to carry out the details. At this point, other individuals will try to do whatever they can to stop, delay, and downright sabotage the project. That’s the wild ride I mentioned earlier. Fingers will be wagged at you at all levels and the final results will depend heavily on your ability to take a deep breath and carry on nonchalantly in spite of the adversarial approach. If the right decisions are made at that upper level, the outcome could be an exceptional product.

The Oasis: It’s rare, but a surprising number of organizations manage to get it all right: Strong leadership at many levels, good communication of goals and strategy, and ultimately, the best ingredient: a positive, supportive atmosphere. The sky’s the limit to these teams since everyone feels connected to the greater goal. This client is definitely a keeper. They may have some less-than-exhilarating projects on the outset, yet every one of them will end with better-than-expected results. And most importantly–you’ll enjoy every minute of it!

Mr. Amit’s description of “The Oasis” is exactly the type of organization where trust flourishes and, as a result, great work does as well. When I really began to explore and understand the implication of trust on doing great work, I had an epiphany. Our “real” work product, our most important deliverable is actually the relationship itself. Not the type of transactional, self-serving relationships that are talked about in junior sales training seminars, but rather, the real, honest-to-goodness type of relationships that engender deep loyalty, commitment, and… you guessed it… trust. It is only then that we have the freedom to produce our most compelling work and generate the most value for our clients.

Kristian Andersen + Associates